As awareness of environmental issues has grown, customers of shipping companies have become increasingly concerned with the impact of their shipping activities on the environment. Many shipping customers (e.g., sellers of goods) are interested in evaluating and optimizing the sustainability of their shipping practices. In particular, certain shipping customers are interested in evaluating their transport packaging systems and optimizing the various packaging used as part of their transport packaging systems to ship products. These shipping customers may also be interested in communicating their environmental awareness to the recipients of their packages and enabling those recipients to distinguish sellers using environmentally responsible shipping practices.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for improved systems and methods for evaluating the sustainability of transport packaging systems and for communicating the sustainability of shipping customers' transport packaging systems (as determined by the evaluation) to recipients of packages from shipping company customers. In addition, there is a need for such a system to provide shipping company customers with an indication of which aspects of their shipping practices may be improved based on the evaluation. Furthermore, there is a need for such a system to provide a level of transparency and accountability in order to ensure confidence by recipients of packages in the legitimacy of the evaluation process.